


Wilderness

by Jacynon



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fjord Has Issues (Critical Role), Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Introspection, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Pre-Relationship, Religious Existentialism, cannot believe that's a real tag, featuring canonical essek discourse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-11
Updated: 2020-05-11
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:55:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24119875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacynon/pseuds/Jacynon
Summary: “Part of me does still miss it,” the words are pulled from Fjord’s mouth as if it’s a great labor to get them out and he tries to avert his eyes, to mask the pained expression that accompanies it. “Not just the abilities it bestowed upon me, not just the power and knowledge - I think it’s more than that. I think I miss trying to impress it.”Even saying as much out loud feels simultaneously like a huge weight being lifted from his chest and like an admission of guilt.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay & Fjord, Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord & Caleb Widogast, Fjord & Nott (Critical Role), Fjord & Yasha (Critical Role), Veth Brenatto & Fjord
Comments: 14
Kudos: 127





	Wilderness

**Author's Note:**

> I missed fjorclay week and this really uses pretty much none of the prompts, except maybe the dreams one. just had fjorclay on my mind this whole month and more specifically fjord’s character.
> 
> last few eps got me craving some introspective melodrama so here’s quite a bit of that, laced in a vague adjacent-canon AU because I write for myself and no one else so I don’t care if it makes sense or is good but uh I hope you enjoy

It caught him so horribly off-guard that his violent fall to the ship’s deck almost felt deserved.

Being free from the weight in his chest - the _literal_ weight, apparently - helped open his eyes to why he’d never seen it coming. It’s like he’d never truly parted with his old patron, deep inside. Not _like_ it; that was exactly the case. The anchor pulling him down was never released, only loosened. He just got so accustomed to the chains around his ankles he forgot they were even there. 

Fjord desperately wanted to believe he was free.

And he’s maybe just a small bit simple-minded.

Not dumb, he’d fervently insist if ever accused - just the type of person who likes simple solutions and who doesn’t always know how to tell when there aren’t any.

It crosses his mind that it’s his fault, that he was wild bait put openly on display, that even unknowingly he embedded the crystal inside of his own chest as if hiding a valuable treasure in a locked yet transparent tome. He took the last piece needed to raise his old God and buried it deep within himself. He’d known it was possible to absorb them, but he didn’t fathom it could be done _accidentally_ , moreso didn’t think he’d be _the one_.

Fjord leans forward and buries his face in his hands. The crystal’s glow, burned into his mind, shines brightly behind his eyes.

He’d thrown away the sword, lost his powers, and tried to sever his connection to that otherworldly abomination in the only way he knew how. 

It wasn’t enough.

Why would _this_ be enough?

Yet, in the midst of his worn dread, there is finality.

Fjord has seen and felt and dreamt of the open pressure, the horrific endlessness of space and time within the ocean. He knows what it feels to be claustrophobic in the vast open abyss - to be faced both with how small he is and how heavy the current pulls against even his greatest strength. He felt it when he saw the scion. It’s a unique brand of fear he’s struggling to verbally explain, to witness a creature that could’ve been familiar to him in another life.

The moment his hand touched the hilt of his falchion, he felt it. The first dream he came face-to-face with his then patron’s eye, he felt it. And despite all of the pain, despite the terror deep within his chest, he also felt…

Well, there’s no good way to put it. He felt important. He felt like finally, _finally_ he was being shown a sign of who he’s supposed to be.

 _Watching_.

He was afraid, yes. More than that, he was enthralled. It was exciting in a way, to feel like the center of attention - to feel like he was _meant_ for something.

_Learn. Grow. Provoke. Consume._

The words flooded through him in a confused whirl. Now, he sits, the nausea piling inside of him as the silence becomes overbearing and he wishes dearly for the background chatter of his friends. He couldn’t have known what to make of his God back then. He couldn’t have known the horrors he’d be subjected to for submitting to the devouring presence beneath the sea.

Anyway, the bottom line is that he doesn’t want to fucking think about it.

He and his friends just ended a war. That’s what he should be thinking about, and even that brings an unease that always comes with the calm before the storm.

It was a thoughtless decision to room by himself once they reached shore somewhere on the Swavain Islands, momentarily taking residence in a waterside tavern he didn’t have the energy to recall the name of as they anticipate the date of their last voyage to TravelerCon. Maybe it was the adrenaline - the period between their adventures where they’re just waiting until the next new thing needs fixing or, less often now, breaking - they’d set sail as soon as possible if only for the sake of keeping that momentum instead of letting it fizzle away.

As a result, they find they’re making tremendous time, and Fjord finds he’s been using that time to reflect a little too hard on his last few days.

In the back of his mind he vaguely thinks the waitress warily eyeing his tuned-out expression welcomed them to the Twyne Mist Inn, _that’s right_ , but he needed the sleep and thankfully found a long undisturbed and dreamless rest their first decent night back on land.

Then came the second night, right alongside the realization that Fjord cannot recall the last time he slept alone.

He didn’t sleep.

It caught up to him that he’d only drifted off so soundly the first night was due to his extreme exhaustion. For the first time, he couldn’t stand the rocking boat, the crash of the more violent waves against the creaking wood below. Each one brought too a warning.

That’s how it felt. That’s why all his experience in finding good rest through the roughest of storms is replaced by sharp spikes of anxiety at even the slightest out of kilter motion. 

Days went by and each he spent in an increasingly drained stupor and one single cycle on a grounded bed did just the bare minimum to remedy that.

Like this, even though it’s been only a few days since the fated encounter, he feels useless. He feels like if he were to get into a fight he might just collapse on the spot. That’s a dangerous state to be in, for all the apparent peace they’ve helped put in place for the time being. There’s still the possibility of treacherous trials and the peril of travel they tend to face at most given times.

The quiet is maddening.

Just like that, it’s interrupted by a knock. Fjord jumps and though he doesn’t respond he doesn’t need to. The person on the other side tries the unlocked doorknob and the twisting halts for a moment like whoever’s there is surprised at that fact. It’s just a second’s pause before they proceed to open the door.

A flash of pink gives away who it is before the man’s face is in full view.

Blinking once at a Fjord sitting hunched over on the edge of his bed and probably looking worse than the drunks at the bar below them, Caduceus creaks the door open just a bit more and enters the room. “Ah, sorry for intruding if you were - “

“No, no. The intrusion is welcome,” Fjord tries at a smile and rubs his face, purposefully relaxing himself as much as he can. “Feeling a bit stir crazy.”

Almost as a spontaneous offer, Caduceus gestures to the open archway leading down the hall. “Why not get some air?”

It sounds nice to go for a walk in theory, but Fjord can imagine the funny looks he’ll get and it suddenly sours the idea to think he’d have to explain to one of his friends just why he’s been looking worse for wear.

“I’ve been told to rest,” he recites as an instinctive defense. “Or, more accurately, ordered to.”

It’s not a lie. Caduceus guesses, “Jester?” and Fjord only laughs in response.

Though his much larger friend doesn’t join in, his smile widens and he hesitates briefly before closing the door behind him. He takes a few steps forward as if to get a better look and Fjord instinctively slouches forward under the scrutiny, shoulders raised like a scared animal, a bit too on edge in a manner that gives away much more than the exhausted features he’s making an effort to hide ever might.

As he settles himself on the chair just against the wall opposing Fjord, Caduceus leans an arm against its accompanying black-walnut table. Like he can’t tell just from looking, he asks, “How are you?”

It’d almost be insulting if it didn’t seem so damn genuine.

Fjord lets out a breath and shrugs halfheartedly. “Fine. Tired.”

“It was quite an experience.”

 _That’s an understatement_ , is what Fjord would like to retort with, but he’s not sure if that’s true or if the tension just made things feel that way. “I’m more worried about the ways it wasn’t. I honestly expected things to go much worse,” he admits in passive reflection. “Guess they will, sooner or later.”

Caduceus frowns like the other man’s completely missed the point of something. 

Then, his eyes flit to the side in conflicted contemplation. “I meant more the night we were attacked at sea, but I do share your...apprehension,” he says slowly, like he might not be sure that’s the right word.

Fjord hopes his surprised blink isn’t too noticeable. Silently, he berates himself, because _really?_ It’s the only thing that’s been on his mind for muzzy days and sleepless nights and it seriously didn’t occur to him that Caduceus just might have already known how much it’s affected him? He’s possibly the most likely candidate in that regard.

It doesn’t stop Fjord from keeping up his façade. He tilts his head and lets out a huff of laughter not dissimilar to a sigh. “Right. It’s one I’d sooner like to forget.”

“Would you?” Caduceus asks.

Incredible how much more eyes can say than words, or Fjord thinks so as he’s caught in those belonging to his companion. It should be a simple question with a simple answer. 

Even so, the two words dig into his chest in a clear and surprisingly effective attempt to pull the truth from it.

Fjord reluctantly admits, “It had me in a choke-hold,” and even that feels like saying too much, though he knows it isn’t beginning to scratch the surface and he works to say, “Uk’otoa. A literal one, but I suppose also in the metaphorical sense. I thought it knew where I belonged and...by leaving it, I was betraying everything I was supposed to be. I was betraying my, um, _destiny -_ what it had in mind for me, anyway. I think I get that now. I’ve disappointed it and it doesn’t like being disappointed.”

There was a hope he tried not to let go of that the creatures of Uk’otoa’s servitude were only after the orb and not him in specific, but even before that was verbally dashed away he knew the truth deep within him.

Caduceus asks, “Do you still believe your destiny lies with it?”

That question gives Fjord mental whiplash and he jerks his head up. 

“Uh, well, clearly not,” he replies, vaguely offended.

Sheepishly, Caduceus rubs the back of his neck and grimaces. “I didn’t mean to imply anything. My friend,” he regards Fjord seriously, “Deep down, what do you feel for your former patron?”

Fjord carefully mulls over that.

His immediate response is _confused_ , if only for the fact that he’s still yet to grasp the gravity of what his old God had in store for him, but he still knows even if he can’t fully wrap his head around it or how he’d ever allow himself to get to that point. It doesn’t make sense why taking a monstrous form is at all worth the nightmare, but Fjord was _there_ , and he’s not sure how he’d be thinking now if he hadn’t been pulled away in time.

Another answer might be that he doesn’t want to feel anything for Uk’otoa at all. He’d much rather just not think about it, really.

“Afraid,” he decides on, and it’s more honest than either alternative.

Tender understanding crosses over the other man’s features “Well, I can see why. Death can be a frightening experience for some.”

Oddly enough, though that is technically what sparked all of this, it’s not exactly where the fear comes from. Long before Fjord accepted himself as a - not necessarily a _victim_ , or he wouldn’t like to put it that way, and he doesn’t think _servant_ is a better term for it - before he knew he wasn’t in control, he felt that fear.

And he hasn’t died before, sure, but a number of the others have. Dying might have been an ironic wake-up call. That said, it feels wrong to say it was the death itself he can blame his current problems on. Those of his friends who’ve been brought back aren’t dealing with the same things as him. Not as far as he knows. One of them is right here, after all.

It physically pains him to expose his worries now, after he’s gone a time trying so hard to hide them. He covers his mouth and lays his other arm over his legs. “I suppose part of me does…”

His eyes fixate on the floor. Mind going blank, he searches mentally for an escape from the hole he’s dug himself into.

When he spares a glance back up, Caduceus is staring, waiting for him to continue.

“Part of me does still miss it,” the words are pulled from Fjord’s mouth as if it’s a great labor to get them out and he tries to avert his eyes, to mask the pained expression that accompanies it. “Not just the abilities it bestowed upon me, not just the power and knowledge - I think it’s more than that. I think I miss trying to impress it.”

Even saying as much out loud feels simultaneously like a huge weight being lifted from his chest and like an admission of guilt.

Clicking his tongue, Caduceus simply summarizes, “You miss the idea of working towards approval.”

Putting it so blunt strikes something sharply personal inside Fjord and he folds his arms a bit too tight, hardens his expression, tries to ignore it.

He feels the need to explain himself, getting up and pacing just a few steps across the room as he starts. “Old habits, maybe,” he says, then pauses, as if preparing to expose an artery in front of Caduceus. “When you’re with a crew, you run together as a unit. It’s hard to be listened to. Hard to be seen among your other shipmates. Praise was hard to come by, too. Vandran must’ve learned something from...you know, _it_ , because he knew exactly what to say to make us work for as much praise as fucking possible.”

Regret fills him just as the words leave his mouth. He hadn’t meant to say that much, or to sound quite so callous, and he could swear that’s not how he feels if he thought he understood his own feelings as well as he actually does. All he’s known recently is frustration and confusion - and he was so sure before, so content with his life in his pretend certainty.

How many times will he settle in the gentle waves of the sea before he expects the oncoming storm?

A better question would be to ask how long he’s willing to wallow in ocean metaphors before he decides to take this as the victory he knows it is, not as one more fruitless push away from the destiny he’s been constantly orbiting since his life in Port Damali, since long after he’d tried to escape his patron. Fjord should be _happy,_ not more paranoid than ever before.

“You’ve always spoken so highly of him. It sounds more complicated than you’ve let on,” Caduceus all too casually states, as always gently brushing upon a raw nerve with a grace held only by him.

“I don’t - “ Fjord feels himself getting defensive and stops, suddenly very self-conscious, and concludes weakly, “Yeah, it’s complicated. It’s just how I learned, is what I’m saying.”

Before, he never would’ve thought to have one negative sentiment toward the man he’d seen as a father figure. Time complicates.

It’s a bitter tragedy his life has spun from the way it seems fate has in store. He gives a humorless smile, his expression far away. “For as long as I can remember, I yearned for a purpose. Then I got one.”

He’ll even say that’s a little too dramatic, but it’s how he feels at the time. Caduceus seems to grapple with both of those facts as he forms his reply. He rises from his seat and moves toward the door, like Fjord’s desire to be left alone was telepathically relayed to him. “Purpose comes in many forms, more for the ones with the most potential. I believe you’ve been exposed to multiple and some have tried to take advantage of that.”

The word echoes a familiar whisper in the back of Fjord's mind, a surging memory. _Potential_.

“...Thanks. I’ll - I’ll try to get some sleep,” he breathes out.

The last piece of friendly advice Caduceus gives before he closes the door and heads off to his own room is, “It might help to meditate somewhere a bit more open. Just a suggestion.”

A better suggestion might have been to meditate at all, which is something Fjord knows he can’t avoid forever.

He remains standing in the middle of his room for a moment, going over the conversation in his head a thousand times. His heart’s pounding wildly and he wonders why, but he also knows why. It’s when he turns to make his way back to bed that one glint of sunlight draws his eye toward the reflective source.

His stomach jumps, just a bit, and he slowly moves to pick it up.

If Caduceus noticed Fjord’s pin of the Wildmother was left abandoned on the dresser and has been ever since they’d departed from the war negotiations, he’d decided not to mention it.

* * *

One night, Fjord died. Early morning training begins again about as quickly as a week later.

To her credit, it was clear Beau wanted to get back on schedule immediately, but even she seemed to know they all needed a bit of time to recover. Days on the sea between large battles and other world altering events were spent mostly resting and recovering, all of them running together until they’d get to their next adventure. It's been a good while since they've been allowed a reprieve or any chance to form a routine.

Fjord thinks they've got to be looking up from here.

He’s confident things will be back to normal in no time at all. This is one of those liminal points in their travels. It’s an opportunity to reflect and to look forward, a time they’ll eventually have to move past. They’ll soon board the Ball-Eater, Fjord will be back in his mostly ostensible seat as Captain and he wonders why this feels less like a welcome anticipation and instead gives him the nausea of an impossible deadline.

It’ll be a comfort. Nothing’s happened so far, and would there really be such a threat waiting worse than what they faced for him if it hadn’t been shown already?

He concludes it must’ve really been a mistake to sit down for even a second in the middle of their training on their little isolated section of the archipelago’s beach if his brain’s using the downtime to be neurotic.

Orange still tints the skyline that early morning despite the quickly brightening blue enveloping the three of them.

Hot sand sifts between his toes. He resists the sudden powerful urge to lie down and let himself sink into it, as well as the equally strong instinct that letting the waves catch and pull him under would feel wonderful on his sun-kissed green skin right now.

...It probably wouldn’t be the best idea.

Yasha’s exhaustion is more emotional than physical and Fjord gets the feeling she could easily keep going right along with their friend, but she’s pacing herself to match him. It’s the first time in a good while he’s allowed to have a quiet moment with her, the two taking a short rest tiredly leaned up against each other while Beau spends her time stretching in preparation for the next round.

He feels her shift to get a better look at him and lowers her voice just enough to prevent Beau from overhearing. 

“So, are - are you...alright? Being so close to the water, that is,” she frowns, turning to fix her eyes on the receding sea. “I know we don’t exactly have many options, I’m just wondering, is that comfortable for you?”

The very idea of being uncomfortable near water is utterly foreign to him.

It’s still a real and tangible possibility he’ll be hunted and found if on the waters of something dark and incomprehensibly massive trying to kill him, but he doubts Uk’otoa is going to crawl from the shore and grab him. All he does is give a half-shrug and respond, “Shouldn’t be a problem if we stay near shore.”

She nods, but her expression says she isn’t at all swayed by his deflection. “Right. I just meant, personally - “

“I appreciate the concern, but I’ve had plenty of bad experiences with the ocean," he interrupts before she can make any points he won't be able to argue with. "Never made me leave it before.”

That reply doesn’t seem to help the crease in her worrying brow. 

“Well, there’s a bad experience and then there’s dying,” she says, deadpan.

That gives Fjord just the smallest bit of pause.

He fumbles for an answer, voice cracking on half-formed words before he scoffs and smiles wryly. “We got back on the water and nothing’s happened yet. We’ve been out there this entire time. How many days have we been traveling? Save that one night, nothing’s come for me or the orb as of yet. We’ve been fine.”

 _Fine_ isn’t quite an apt word in this case, he’s more than aware. Each and every single one of them was on their guard every night they slept on that ship from the war negotiations to here. It was a particularly restless few days for just about everyone and he remembers it well. Veth and Caleb were caught especially often working at odd hours, moreso than usual. Jester must've had a thousand spells prepared every single day as she seemingly never got over how unprepared she'd been that single night.

Still, they’ve all been much more at ease ever since they touched ground and Fjord’s sure he’s on his way just the same.

There’s frustration in Yasha’s eyes. She looks around, stopping on certain objects - the water, a distant pair of what seem to be young siblings of at least part-lizardfolk heritage playing in the sand, the blanketing cloudless sky - and her gaze finally rests on him once more. “You’re not afraid?” 

He picks at the sand below, but doesn’t break eye contact.

“Of the ocean? Of course I am. I always have been. Everyone should be,” he catches the implication and corrects himself, a bit too hurriedly. “A respectful fear, you know. It’s a careless beast sometimes. If you don’t take the necessary precautions, it’ll rip anything and everything from under you. Its waves don’t discriminate. Anyway, I’m not the first in our group to die.”

If it sounds like he’s trying more to convince himself of something than her, she doesn’t make note of it.

Instead, she gives him a soft smile and turns back to Beau - even she’s getting tired from the nonstop movement - and Yasha puts a hand on Fjord’s shoulder. “Sorry,” she starts. Her tone is one of admiration. “You’ve just always looked so peaceful on the water. You never seemed particularly frightened.”

Fjord only nods and recites what he’s always known to be true. That being, “Sea’s always calmed me down.”

The statement seems to strike her as strange and she gives him an inquisitive look from the side, still facing forward. “It still does?”

And sure, the inquiry itself might throw him off, but what gets him more is the open and honest care in her voice. 

Along with every instance he makes note of Yasha’s inherent kindness is a pile of crushing weight taking residence in his chest.

It’s funny, a sad sort, how recent feelings of guilt can bring up those of the past. Yasha is the prime example for Fjord. Those small bouts of cruelty from his past, especially towards those he’s grown to so deeply care for, are all black marks of shame upon him he can’t scrub off. He’s never been able to properly apologize for how he treated her despite the pain she’d gone through. It’s never felt like the right time and he’s afraid it never will.

Never felt it right to let those muddled feelings resurface, for him or for her.

Still, he can't keep himself from mentioning with an undeniable fondness, “Each and every one of you has been caring for me quite well.”

She shrugs like that's the most obvious thing in the world, like there wouldn't even be another option when one of them falls than for the rest to completely lose it. That mutual protectiveness is something Fjord's pointed out himself on more than one occasion, but proof of that continues to surprise him. “Yeah, I mean,” Yasha narrows her eyes, looking distinctly like she's reflecting on the events in question. “We all kind of lost control once you fell.”

Fjord recalls the brief rundown Jester gave him of what happened. “That’s what I heard.”

It'd been strange listening to her recount the chaos that was still ensuing long after Fjord was already gone - the bursts of furious violence from each of his friends, the impending process of reviving both himself and Orly, the somehow even more arduous task of finding and removing the orb from Fjord's chest - it all sounded to him like...a lot. A lot to've missed, at least.

He stopped her around the time she began going into the events he eventually was present for. Specifically, he didn't want to hear once again the doubtless confirmation that Fjord not only carried the target but also _was_ the target.

His old God wants him dead or worse for his failure of devotion. He's starting to empathize with Caleb's views of religion as a bit of a hassle.

It’s a struggle he shares with Yasha, as well. Religious fealty is a conflict of emotions he recognizes in so many of those around him and she's no exception. In her eyes, it’s clear she recognizes him too.

Salty air rushes across the two of them for just a beat. It’s a smell that threatens to melt Fjord from the inside out and he revels in it, but Yasha flinches distastefully at it. That or it’s just one more physical quirk, a sign she’s trying to find the right words to say, the right way to ask or say what she’s transparently deliberating on. “Do you remember anything?” she drops the question on him as gently as possible yet it still hits like a thousand stones, “Anything after falling and - well - you know, anything?”

“I remember dying,” Fjord answers, unhelpful yet apologetic in that fact. It was all a haze of adrenaline and terror until it was nothing. “Not much after that. I’m glad none of you did anything so reckless as to get a third person killed. And of course I’m grateful I wasn’t, ah, _dragged off the ship_ , as it turns out.”

“Well, a couple of us certainly tried on the reckless front. We weren’t...we all fought to keep you, Fjord, yourself included.”

Before he can come up with even the least effective way to respond to that, another voice cuts in between them. “You two done cuddling?”

They both jerk their heads in the direction of a slowly approaching sweat-covered Beau, taken out of their conversation.

Yasha's surprisingly much better at social recovery here - maybe because of who's involved, but he isn't interested in speculating on that any further - and she flashes Beau a small smile before getting up. In a teasing tone she says, “Hey, we wouldn’t start without you.”

It doesn't take Fjord long to smirk and standing right alongside her. He elbows her side and asks, "Does this morning feel longer than normal to you?”

“I think it does.”

Eying them both suspiciously, Beau puts her hands on her hips. “Are you trying to get out early?”

“I’m _rusty_ ,” he groans dramatically and throws his arms in the air in faux mitigation.

That at least gets her to laugh, so it’s more than worth it. 

She leans her head back to look at the clear sky and through her sweat covered body and laboured breathing it seems this is the first moment she’s finally able to relax. “Me too. That’s why I’m doin’ it. Look, I missed this shit so bad,” her smile grows wider when she says it, “I’ve been so out of it without a morning routine. It’s like...I dunno. I like things consistent. I like the little stuff that lets us have just a bit more control, y’know?”

Even though it’s not exactly profound, the sentiment still makes Fjord think a bit harder on what it is that makes him feel so connected to Beau despite their differences. They know the same roads and face similar fears. All the things they don’t have in common seem to dissipate and become irrelevant whenever they both have their minds set on the same goal or when one or both are in danger.

He knows exactly how she feels. Fjord would like, in some notable and specific cases, to have just a bit more control.

Like her bout of emotionality is something that’s only just now occurred to her, Beau inhales and turns herself in the direction of the dirt road leading to the Twyne Mist Inn just across the beach, red just on the tips of her ears. “Ignore I said any of that. Fuck it, let’s just get some breakfast.”

Though both Fjord and Yasha share a knowing glance, neither call Beau on it.

“No arguments here,” he lazily grants her. “We’ll do some extra workouts tomorrow.”

As she quickens her pace and as Yasha makes a point to match his, he pretends he doesn’t see the small smile mirroring theirs Beau tries to keep hidden.

* * *

Late nights of insomnia become a struggle to spend in bed. 

He stops trying to trick his constantly drumming brain into quieting down and he starts walking around the inn, dim candles and faint moonlight more than entertaining his eyes as just behind them burns from exhaustion.

That morning he absolutely half-assed those extra workouts because he knew he’d drop to the ground less than halfway through if he didn’t.

Though in this moment, he comes to a complete halt in the middle of the hallway.

Someone’s speaking, he’s sure of it, in a manner difficult to make out but surely close-by. It’s not a trick of the mind when he starts hearing that isolated voice among the line of doors to people who absolutely should be sleeping right now if not downstairs for a late night drink, but it does take him longer than normal to recognize it’s real just from how quiet it is underneath an otherwise silent night.

He follows the direction of the sound and his vision starts focusing inside the dim partitions. 

There, he sees it; a thin sliver of light running vertical along the wall. It’s coming from the door to Caleb’s room, slightly ajar, the indication being the notion of said man’s voice creeping out far too low to properly make out. 

Another one - lighter, feminine, familiar - joins his.

The unusual and somewhat distant sight he’s greeted with puts a flash of unease in him before his mind catches up with what’s actually going on, and exactly why Jester would be in Caleb’s room so late at night.

Fjord inches his way near the door and looks inside. He’s within earshot it seems at the perfect time, able to catch most of the message without alerting his friends.

“...as we’re preoccupied ourselves, it will be a time before we’re to meet,” Caleb says, almost in a scripted way, “But that’s how she is with everyone - with her friends. Our friends.”

To indicate she’s following along, Jester nods her head, blue curls bobbing up and down. She hums and puts her hands on her hips. “I’m going to tell him,” she begins before putting her fingers up in faux-quotation marks, “ _We won’t see you in a long time and I just want to check up on you because you’re our friend._ ”

Caleb shrugs. “If you’d like to paraphrase, go ahead.”

She proceeds to do what Fjord imagines equates to relaying the message to whoever might be on the other end of the line, but it’s in the impending pause where he can put the pieces of the situation together.

Now, Fjord wouldn’t normally trust himself in deciphering the meaning of a cut off one-sided message, but he knows Caleb and knows that specific _tone_ the man gets with people he’s talking genuinely and openly to. He speaks with a softness reserved for those within the Nein and a select few outside of it.

There’d be more than one person for Caleb to be inclined to contact who’d be too far to meet in a timely manner, but somehow Fjord knows. At least, he has an idea.

Within the silence is Caleb’s palpable anticipation. It’s clear he very much wishes he could be the one in her place talking directly to them, but that he’s not trying to make that fact too obvious. 

Jester breaks through it, though her normally boisterous voice is instinctively subdued to a sort of whisper-yell, “He says he’s good and, like, really excited to show you some stuff!”

It sounds as though he’d like to know more, but the generally positive reception still lifts Caleb’s spirits. “Good to know,” he says, and though it’s not easy to make out from where he’s standing Fjord can hear the smile in his voice.

Unfortunately this is around the time he stops having a brain and tries to lean against the door - the door that’s open.

He doesn’t fall, thankfully, but he does stumble forward and catch the side of the archway just before he can make a total fool of himself and it absolutely catches their attention.

The shock he feels of being caught in the middle of something incriminating is reflected in the eyes of both of his friends and for the single moment they all freeze, Fjord in the middle of regaining his footing while the other two stare widely at him. 

It’s Jester who recovers first. She clasps her hands together and breaks out into a huge smile as she makes her way towards him or, more accurately, towards the door. “Fjord! Hey! Sorry, did you want to talk to Caleb?” her words run together faster than she moves, dashing past him through the archway with both of her hands waving and a big nervous grin on her face. “I was totally just leaving.”

He reaches out and tries to protest, “Well, I was - “

“Goodnight!”

With that one word, she flings the door shut and the sound of her soft steps tap swiftly across the floorboards to indicate she’s quite literally running away from the conversation.

That leaves Fjord to stare at the door, dumbfounded, before turning his head to find Caleb’s eyes are still locked on him and what they’ve lost in surprise they’ve gained in unease.

Before Caleb can question him about his own reasons for being out so late, Fjord takes the opportunity to verify his suspicions. “Did she happen to be Sending a message to Essek?”

The misdirection is surprisingly effective. Caleb visibly relaxes, like he’d expected Fjord to make a different accusation entirely. “I was. She was, for me,” he corrects himself messily, like frantically trying to cover up a mistake. “We normally send letters, they just take a good while. Her abilities are helpful for spontaneous check-ins.”

“Alright. That’s good,” Fjord notes the apprehension he feels radiating from his friend and hesitates before asking, “I mean, right?”

It does make Caleb appear a bit less on-edge. Still, a pain rings clear in his voice when he makes his request. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d like to keep that between you and I.”

That catches Fjord a bit off-guard.

It’d already been strange that his two friends waited until late at night to do this, but knowing they’d done so for the express purpose of keeping it under the radar wholly perplexes Fjord. He points out the strangeness as he crosses his arms and backs up to lean against the door. “Jester talks to Essek all the time on her own and the others know about it. I don’t see why you’d need to hide.”

Before he’s even finished speaking, Caleb begins protesting, “Yes, but it’s…”

He trails off and leaves a short moment of silence.

Nodding his head in understanding, Fjord relaxes his tensed shoulders. “Yeah, no, it’s different. I get it,” he says softly before continuing with, “How is he?”

The lowered tone seems to calm Caleb, or lower the tension he’s clearly felt ever since the anticlimax of their war-ending journey - it’d set in him more than anyone else an unshakable sense of foreboding. Understandable enough for Fjord, recalling Caleb’s history both known and newly discovered. Each of them were put off by the uncomfortable ease of their last victory and they’ve been dealing with it in different ways.

Caleb’s response is short. “Good. As good as I could discern from the written form and very brief secondhand exchanges.”

“Suspicious at all?” Fjord asks, cocking his head to the side.

With a shake of his own, Caleb hums and seemingly tries to find the right words. “Cautious, it seems. Maybe. I’d like to believe that, but that is the feeling I get. Busy. He’s been trying to set right a few things he helped set wrong.”

Fjord’s brows raise. “That’s a tall task,” he points out, for a man who’s helped so much the continued suffering of entire nations and countless people, too many for one to memorize. Still, Fjord can’t help being a bit impressed and the slightest bit proud of the drow he and his friends have found an inexplicable fondness for.

Again nodding, this time in solemn agreement, Caleb averts his gaze to the ground. “So it seems.”

It’s not a rift Essek’s absent presence has caused between the members of the Mighty Nein, but a tension - a strain that may loosen or snap depending on the unknowable pressure that’ll inevitably come to a head once the man is physically back in their lives.

There seems to be a silent line carved between the group that no one wants to acknowledge is there, but one right out in the open nonetheless. There are those who see it fit they personally punish Essek one way or another for the crimes he’s both committed and been an accomplice in, or to put him to task for it, or do _something_ to rectify his actions even the slightest bit - those being two in specific.

Nott and Beau are the ones primarily pushing for retribution - the same ones who’d nearly turned on Caleb himself a time before that now seems so far away - and though they’ve also taken a liking to Essek it’s not unreasonable they’d be less enthusiastic accepting him into their lives the same way.

Fjord understands their perspectives, though he deep down doesn’t exactly think they’re the best fit for the job of bringing war criminals to justice. None of them are, not really.

On the other side of that line are Jester and Caleb, though both tow it every now and then out of sheer confused guilt. Yasha is somewhere in the middle, though she probably has too much to worry about on her own to make her stance clear. Where Caduceus lies on that spectrum is…

The thoughts in Fjord’s head grind to a halt. He pushes off the discomfort and guesses it doesn’t matter.

“Good on him, though. Um,” he stumbles through his reassurance, “It’s - I won’t tell, obviously. I just think keeping it a secret makes it seem worse than I’m guessing it really is.”

Essek is their friend. In Fjord’s opinion, he’s a friend to just about all of them, even those openly skeptical of his intentions. Essek is responsible for some truly despicable things. Are they wrong for liking him so damn much anyway?

If so, Fjord’s wrong right along with them.

And because he’s a compulsive placater in a makeshift family made from living embodiments of chaos and knows it, Fjord likes to tend towards not rocking the boat.

...So to speak.

As if he needs at all to dispel any worries, Caleb begins moving his hands in small dismissive waves. “We are just talking. Nothing...specific, really. It’s a process. I expected it to be. A mind never works harder than when trying to convince itself it doesn’t need to change, after all. He needs space, but he believes he can talk to me,” and the way he says it sounds like even he is surprised at that fact, but his next words are spoken quite deliberately, “Even though he appreciates Jester.”

Like that, Fjord immediately connects the dots.

“Oh,” he lets out a breath, nods once and states with a bit of uncertainty, “But he won’t talk to her.”

A shrug and vague gesture tells him he’s at least partially right. “He talks to me through her for the time being - for more pertinent topics, no. I certainly understand. She is supportive and quite...wonderful, as I am sure you know, but also potentially overwhelming,” Caleb explains.

Fjord has to give him that. “Especially when you’re not used to her. Trust me, I get it. I think we all connect better with people we see ourselves in. Similar circumstances bring us together and all,” and he knows that applies to just about all of them in a way. Still, he insists, “I do think he should give Jester more of a chance. She’s a lot better at listening than people give her credit for and a lot more understanding than she lets on.”

Though he will admit that Caleb has grown surprisingly easy to talk to as well, now he both allows it and doesn't so readily engage in the psychological warfare that typified most of their early conversations. There’s an air about him, a profound understanding and empathy that makes Fjord think he’ll never regret binding his life to this man, and Caleb seems both aware of it and unsure of how to properly handle it.

“That is true. I know as well, but he seems apprehensive of - well, of letting her down. My words, not his,” Caleb quickly adds the last part as if Essek is listening and might be offended - which is feasible, since for all his talk of always having a full plate he seems able to make remarkable time for them - before he frowns deeply in thought. “It is easy for someone in his position to...isolate, or to attempt to return to what was formerly normal for him, which I am positive would be a bad thing for everyone. I’m grateful for her resolve. The two of us do well to remind him of our crossing paths.”

They knew full well of Essek’s tendency to peer in on them from time to time, but it’s not been a concern despite all logic dictating Fjord should probably find it incredibly invasive. 

It didn’t even cross his mind again until Beau had pulled him aside and explained her suspicions that Essek had a good understanding of what transpired the night Fjord fell at sea, that he must’ve been watching in at some point or another.

The strangest part is, even with that knowledge in his head and without the knowledge of just how much Essek saw, Fjord finds he doesn’t mind and doesn’t care enough to ask.

 _Carve our own fates, choose our own paths and sidestep these destinies placed upon us nonchalantly by Gods that use us as playthings._ The way he said it, no matter the subject matter at the time, was stated in a way so transparently purposeful to demonstrate that philosophy. Essek’s immersion into Dunamancy seems quite faithfully a reflection of his beliefs.

Those beliefs, or from what Fjord’s been able to glean, are in theory at their core those he’d like to share. 

He’d of course never intentionally become a _war criminal_ , but there are other things he’s done and almost did, things lower down yet still on the same scale of _bad_ he’d very much almost committed himself to, no matter how accidentally. Every new complication makes his view of Essek, despite the drow’s natural charm...difficult to pinpoint. That said, he doesn’t think anything will be helped with more secrets.

He reviews his possible questions carefully without trying to pry too deeply. “What’s he been doing? Has he told you?”

The expression that passes over the other man’s face shows the answer isn’t simple. In truth Fjord didn’t believe it would be. They still barely know a thing about Essek’s personal life, for all the probing they’ve attempted. 

Taking a deep breath, Caleb reaches to summon Frumpkin upon his shoulders and begins scratching the back of his familiar’s head. “Not much more than what you must know, but the good news is that he’s making progress,” he takes just a few steps forward to close the gap between himself and Fjord a bit. “You...did you come in here for anything specific? Were you looking for me? How - how have you been doing?”

Fjord hastily replies, “Good. Fine,” before deciding he’ll have to elaborate if he wants to get out of this with his pride intact. “I mean, I just heard you both from the hall. Couldn’t sleep, took a walk. That sort of thing.”

Something resembling relief crosses Caleb’s face. “Does that help you?”

Fjord resists the urge to laugh.

“Yeah,” he lies.

Well, alright - it’s not _entirely_ a lie. Thrashing back and forth on a creaking mattress in the dark all throughout the night isn’t the most appealing pastime. He’s tried every trick he remembers overhearing during his time on the ocean for a decent sleep - cures for seasickness, menial counting, breathing exercises - and nothing. He knows he’s just going to be staring at the ceiling until his mind numbs and he’s forced into a half-unconscious haze for an hour or two, his brain forcing out of him even the slightest bit of reprieve. His muscles and joints would ache even worse than they do now, and right now they _hurt_.

If he’s going to have that time anyway, he concludes it would only be smart to use it. That’s why he’s taken it upon himself to do some light reading whenever he can get his eyes and mind to focus or to go for walks during those deserted hours, alone with his thoughts.

And Caleb absolutely notices the trepidation in his voice, but he’s either tired enough or kind enough not to point it out. “Good to hear,” he responds plainly.

Inching his way backwards, Fjord reaches for the doorknob. It strains his face, but he gives Caleb a tired smile. “It’s late. You should try to get some sleep.”

Caleb’s eyes are knowing. Still, he doesn’t move.

All he says is a very loaded, “Do take your own advice, my friend.”

Those words replay in Fjord’s head for the rest of the night, right up until the morning sun rises. No time in between does he find rest.

* * *

Vulnerability was never comfortable for Fjord until he met Jester.

Or, more accurately, traveling with her was the first time he’d ever felt free to be confused. Expected to be, even. 

That’s why he’s found the courage to abandon his drink from the tavern and make his way toward the staircase, knowing from her daily patterns that she’d be taking this warm afternoon to herself. Fjord imagines she’s probably doing things a lot more productive than walling herself off in the corner of a bar, catching the curious and wary glances and using them as yet more shields while they dig into her.

Not that _that’s_ what Fjord’s doing - he’s allowed to go to a bar sometimes when his friends are all off on their own. It’s normal behavior for a young man of his stature.

Sure, he’s a few drinks in, but in this moment he thinks it might put him more at ease. He makes a mental note to never tell Beau about this because after his consistent disapproval of relying on mind-altering substances he’d never hear the end of it.

He doesn’t even know what he’s looking for from Jester. He just knows he needs someone to talk to and that she’d listen.

Jester, for all her light-heartedness, is surprisingly good at being serious when the need arises. It hasn’t always led to the greatest of conversations - _you can’t escape that_ passes through his head in an instant - but she’s never afraid to give him straightforward answers and advice regardless of the validity of that advice. She specializes in trickery, but Fjord’s never known someone quite so naturally honest.

Actually, that’s far from the case, but he hasn’t thought of Caduceus for the past few days at all and he doesn’t want to start now.

He feels guilty for avoiding Caduceus and even more for trying to avoid the Wildmother in ways he knows full well are pointless, in ways he knows are only going to bite him right in the ass later. It’s something he understands won’t bring him comfort with the state his mind’s in, not with the details of his destiny slowly unraveling. Fjord knows just how enticing it felt to be part of something bigger than himself.

Then, he remembers the fear that came with his sinking realization that he wasn’t the one in control. 

He’d broken free of the chains his old patron had him in, the burden of fate lifted from his shoulders, but he wonders if that’s at all true.

Choosing the Wildmother felt like exactly that; a choice. Yet there’s an itch in the back of his mind that digs in too deep to reach, the kind that reminds him of _Fjord Stone_ , the kind tells him this was all fated and he’s never really been in control or free, and he was stupid to think so before, and it’s laughable that he’s entertaining the idea he might be now. He’s still a victim of destiny. He’s still doing what he was always meant to do.

Caduceus seems to treat destiny as an old friend. It’s a foreign sight that both impresses Fjord and intimidates him all the same. He’s had varying experiences with destiny and he’d only ever seen it as a means of gaining the power he desperately believed he lacked or as a curse.

To see it as comforting - a sanctuary, even - never crossed his mind before getting to know the well-spoken firbolg. Even when he’d taken pride in his darkness it didn’t feel a blessing.

And he’s not entirely sure how he’s going to verbalize any of that to Jester the way he’s planning to, because he doesn’t think the polar opposite _nothing happens for a reason_ is the answer he’s looking for either.

Jester’s good to talk to, but she sometimes says exactly what you don’t want to hear.

The last thing he wants to get from her is yet another _you can't escape that_ , or any confirmation that after everything he's been through he's still personally bound to Uk'otoa. There's a stain in his soul and he's afraid of showing it off. He's afraid of being told what he's already sure is the truth.

Right as he’s about to turn the corner into the hall his own room and those of his friends are all located, he’s stopped by a voice.

“I didn’t intend to overstep, is all I mean to say.”

That’s Caduceus. Fjord presses his side against the wall, feeling his brain pounding and screaming a very loud, very distinct _fuck_.

It’s almost jarring enough to throw him out of the moment, but he still manages to catch Jester’s gasp - _Jester, too_ \- like she’s just realized something. "Oh, I think I get it," she says.

Fjord tries to follow along, frozen in place.

"I'm sorry?"

"I wasn't upset with you, 'Ducey."

After a short beat, the firbolg lets out a short laugh to himself. "Ah."

For Fjord, in his slightly inebriated and extremely sleep deprived state, the words go in one ear and right out the other. He can’t put together what they’re talking about, what Caduceus might be apologizing to Jester for if anything he’d known about in the first place, or why he’s still standing here listening in on his two friends having a normal exchange in broad daylight.

If he were able to fully concentrate on Jester’s next words he gets the feeling he might pick up on what they’re talking about, but once they’re out they only add more confusion. "Yeah, I was more mad at myself because I was totally not prepared! I wasn't - y'know, I wasn't upset with _you_ ," she clarifies. "It was stressful, anyway, yeah? It was like, heat-of-the-moment frustration."

Guilt strikes deeper in Fjord's chest every second he remains standing there. This time, he has no excuse.

He nearly misses Caduceus responding with, "I certainly understand that."

"Yeah, so no hard feelings. We're all alive! One of us was going to have to revive Fjord and the other would've done the same for Orly, so it wasn't a big deal however it happened. I'm just glad we are all together."

“I must have just misunderstood. You're right, it was stressful.”

Hearing his own name makes Fjord flinch. He should leave now, he knows. Understanding the subject matter makes his better judgement scream at the rest of him about how he absolutely won’t enjoy what he hears if he stays. What were the odds they'd be talking about that right this second, and what are the odds neither of them have already noticed him?

 _Fairly high_ is the answer he gets when he hears Jester speak again. “Have you seen Fjord lately? Is he okay? I was going to check up on him, but every time we see each other, it’s like…”

She trails off, but Caduceus seems to get the idea. “Right. That’s how it’s been for me too, unfortunately.”

Alarms ring in Fjord’s ears. 

It feels like his brain is rushing statements and objections and questions and many, _many_ more questions so fast he can’t fully make out a single one. Breaking him out of his thoughts is Caduceus, showing off a rare moment of - not necessarily weakness as he's far from weak or extraordinary vulnerability as he's never been averse to that - but the subtlest doubt. "It was...I worry about how much effort I placed into that spell. It was just barely enough to bring him back."

That strikes like a hot knife shooting into Fjord's chest, a feeling he knows all too well. It’s a wonder his heart hasn’t escaped from his rib cage from how fast it’s beating.

Struggling to maintain her cheerful tone, Jester’s tone flattens and grows ever softer. "Yeah, it was seriously a close shave. Way closer than usual."

“You’ve been more prepared since then,” Caduceus commends her, like their shared paranoia is a silver lining to all of this somehow. Fjord would admit it’s better than the alternative. “More cautious. That’s how it’s felt, anyway.”

The blue tiefling lets out an exasperated groan. She sounds more than ready to let out some steam. “It’s getting really hard. I mean, okay - I don’t know if this makes sense, but I am _so_ in over my head and I am _loving it_ , but it’s still kind of scary? Like, TravelerCon is coming up and I’ve had so little time to prepare between everything else, you know? And we’re basically involved in the war now, directly,” Jester adds a bit quieter, “And what if Uk’otoa really is just waiting to attack us? That would set us back so bad.”

At the passing mention of his old God, a chill runs up Fjord's spine.

Caduceus brings up the obvious, “It might do worse, but I do see what you mean.”

“Well, I think we can take them on now. They’ve got to be willing followers, right? It’s not like _hey, come serve me so you can have cool sea powers but you’ve got to become a fish monster_ is a super appealing pitch for a God. There can’t be that many of them.”

Considering just how close Fjord himself came to falling into that demographic despite not at all believing the ultimate outcome worth it once he found out, he wonders what the trappings are, what his own point of no return would've looked like. They can't all be completely willing if Uk'otoa is so...well, _punishing_ towards those who defy and disappoint it. There have to be those out there who'd successfully escaped the clutches of it, those who found it within themselves to denounce it.

Of course, there's a possibility that all those before him who'd ever tried to aren't around to tell the tale.

That's decidedly not what he'd like to believe.

“We...don’t know that much, really,” Caduceus points out politely, “But I don’t doubt our ability to protect Mister Fjord.”

That’s the moment Fjord decides to take his leave. 

Overwhelmed and terrified of being caught even though realistically it wouldn’t be that strange for him to just round the corner at any moment, he instead starts back the way he came as quietly as he can. Since he can still hear Jester’s distant response after a few steps away he picks up his pace and heads downstairs yet again for another round.

* * *

Rays of sunlight pierce through Fjord’s skin and the heat coupled with his increasing fatigue both give him a mild headache.

It just starts to kick in as he makes his way to the docking area down by the beach. He’s more than familiar with the customs of boat renting around these parts, but his halfling friend wanted to do the honors and whether that’s for the sake of learning on her own or giving him an hour or so of extra sleep he absolutely didn’t take he’s not sure. It’s a rare nice gesture from her he’s planning on tucking away for future use.

She’s dressed for the chill morning weather, stepping around barefoot in a simple yet charming outfit he’s sure he’s never seen on her. It’s a good look for Nott - a long sleeved pale green jumper of moderate quality patchwork fabric and black overalls - it fits her well even though it’s nothing on her usual ornate dress.

A good look for _Veth_ , he corrects himself.

 _Nott_ still slips into conversation and she rarely ever calls them on it, but she even acts ever so different from when she’d been a goblin.

That, or she’d been changing the whole time and her physical transformation only highlighted the result.

It’s almost more comical to find a young halfling woman trying desperately to transport what’s at least over three-hundred feet of thick rope into a boat nearly her size than the little goblin girl alternative. She hauls it over her head in an impressive or possibly lucky feat of strength and hobbles backward, nearly falling over when she triumphantly raises her arms in a cut off cheer. This is _her_ and he’s getting a rare moment to really see that. 

It reminds him he’s only just recently started to show his own true self to his friends and they’ve shown him theirs.

Some of the people they’ve all crossed paths with might not even recognize Fjord as the same person anymore.

But Veth isn’t necessarily a different person, not in the same way. The Veth they know now is who Nott’s grown into over the time they’ve all spent together. Her progression was gradual. For Fjord, change comes in waves.

Those waves thankfully aren’t present on the still waters just past the packed dock. It’s just the edge of the market and where some other fishermen are setting up around them at their own assigned ships. Veth sees him, gestures for him to help her carry the rest of their supplies in and he rushes to comply.

It’s only as they’re readying to set off that Fjord thinks to ask why she’d asked him specifically to join her that day.

She waffles a bit before deciding on exclaiming, “It’s like exposure therapy!”

“I have no idea what that is.”

Veth shrugs and says, “Just do something scary a lot and it won’t be as scary anymore.”

Fjord looks at her incredulously. “That sounds like...more desensitizing, not - “ he stops himself from even going down that route and settles back on his original point, a bit agitated despite the fact he wasn’t technically tricked into this. “I didn’t know _that_ was what this is about. Veth, I am not afraid of the ocean. I’ve spent as long as I can remember on its waters and a few bad experiences aren’t going to change that. I have had far more bad experiences on land than on sea and I’m not afraid of the dirt.”

Even though he says that and is pretty sure it’s factually true, it doesn’t feel correct.

This is something Veth doesn’t hesitate to point out. “I mean, that’s not much of a comparison at all,” but she doesn’t probe him about it beyond that. Instead, she pats the side of the small ship and the sly smile plastered on her face widens. “Just give it a shot. We already rented the boat. What’ll we do with the boat?”

“You didn’t want to go to the market, so we’re fishing instead.”

She gapes at him. “You already knew!” her voice carries and draws some attention, but it’s so over-the-top he can only laugh at it. “My God!”

Without any more prompting, she goes back to loading their belongings into the interior of their fishing vessel and Fjord moves to assist as he finds himself lost in thought. 

All Veth’s talk about relating her experience with water to his has him uncomfortable. He knows of what she’s told them all and it feels like a much more personal aversion than what he imagines when he thinks of the ocean. Veth doesn’t love water the same way Fjord’s always known himself to and from what he knows she hadn’t harbored any strong feelings for it either way before she’d been drowned.

It’s wrong to think he could relate. It’d have to be much harder for her. 

He can’t manage to keep the disquiet from his voice. “A boat is much different from a ship, much closer to the water - are you sure you don’t want me to do this myself? I could take care of it if you’re not comfortable with this,” he says, trying desperately to sound genuine and not like he’s making fun of her. “Or I’m guessing this _exposure therapy_ is more for you.”

From her scrunched up face, he gets the impression he didn’t succeed.

“I don’t know, I sort of expected you’d be a little afraid of it. The ocean has literally killed you before!” she exclaims incredulously, like it’s on the top ten list of strangest occurrences that’ve directly caused them all serious bodily harm when it probably wouldn’t even reach top fifty, but he concedes it’s a reasonable assumption. “I’m still going,” she says definitively, and there’s no arguing with her.

She unties the rope and Fjord begins rowing with her direction to a specific spot she’d pointed out to him the previous day.

Per their agreement to take turns so they won’t tire more quickly, it’s Veth who casts her line first while Fjord takes a seat at the other end.

Once they’re a good few meters away from the docks and the other ships here for just the same purpose as them, Fjord finally starts to feel the pleasant back and forth of the rolling waters and he leans back against the wall of the small vessel, closing his eyes just for a moment to revel in it. There’s a growing pit in his stomach he actively fights off, one that’s activating his fight-or-flight instinct and making the tips of his fingers twitch, but that’s surely something he can overcome.

It’s possible there’s something to Veth’s theory of facing his fears head-on, even if he wouldn’t consider this a fear.

A comfortable silence falls over them as they listen to distant rushing water and wind and faraway ambiance. For a little over a half hour, all is calm with two or three bursts of overly excited energy whenever she gets a bite, but they don’t yet catch anything.

Still with her back to him, Veth breaks the silence. Her voice is unusually soft. “This is actually nice.”

He spares her one look with a smile he can’t help and he notices her hands are shaking. Still, she sounds genuine. He then turns his head over to the side, just barely peering into the dark moving water. “It is, right? Relaxing.”

Though he fully intended to turn right back to her to gauge her reaction, he finds himself unable to look away from the open waters he’s been subconsciously averting his eyes from up until now. Shock ripples through him and he’s sure he can’t comprehend what it is that’s below them and covering a good amount of their surroundings.

He sees...something.

It’s a shadow of movement.

In fact, he sees a _lot_ of movement where he’d previously only seen the swirl of murky waters he’s been used to for as long as he’s known these ones in specific. 

He jolts up and leans over the edge to get a better look. The sea is something he should be more than familiar with and yet it’s as if he’s looking at them with new eyes. There are species of fish he knows and a few he doesn’t - each one clear and vibrant as the last - and they’re all around in the middle of the day.

He wants to signal Veth, to show her the amazing sight, but he can’t manage to pull his eyes away. It’s more than mesmerizing. It’s otherworldly.

After his amazement comes the understanding of exactly what he’s looking at.

The sea is still there, still shifting and crashing, but it’s entirely transparent. For miles and miles it stretches on and he can see all of it clearly.

Fjord can see the bottom of the ocean.

Vertigo shoves itself into his spine and sends waves through his limbs and chest. He’s paralyzed and his stomach drops. It’s like looking down from the top of an impossibly tall building without a barrier protecting you from dropping straight to the bottom, or staring from the sky to the incomprehensibly small specks of land bound to be your grave if you so much as stumble or take a wrong step.

Though the vast expanse is inviting, it’s also terrifying in a way he’s not even sure he’d be able to grasp. It’s more than he’d ever imagined possible and it’s all around him. It plasters all over in his mind like the face of someone he’d nearly forgotten warped by time.

He’s falling.

Within the following few moments is a short gap where his consciousness disappears. One second he’s dropping at an impressive velocity into an expanse ready to embrace him and in the ensuing one he’s swallowing salt water and thrashing his limbs for dry land.

It’s an agony he’s more than intimate with, but it’s one he’d never be able to get used to. It’s funny how drowning never loses the shocking burn that comes with his lungs being filled as he tries to gasp for the air he can’t reach. The feeling of having one’s insides invaded by something that definitely shouldn’t be there is a painful mortification, the kind that seems an eternal torment, a nightmare he’s sure to never wake from.

But, like all other times, it comes to an end. The next thing he knows he’s back on the boat.

“Fjord!” Veth screams in his ear and it hurts _real_ fucking bad. “Tell me you’re okay right now!”

Reality starts to sink in for him.

They’re moving back and forth the way they might if their small ship were to be forcefully rocked. His entire body is dripping wet. He’s on his side, lying twisted in his own vomited sea water and the scattered bits of kelp he can see in the mess he’s unintentionally made inside of the boat. Right next to him, Veth’s face is contorted into exaggerated horror and distress as her small hands cling to his shirt.

She gives him time to finish puking and come up with a response once he’s finally able to turn his coughing and wheezing into something resembling a steady breath.

From vocal chords sounding like they’ve been raked over a desert of burning sand comes a flat, “I’m okay.”

“What happened?” she demands.

“I’m not...I’m not entirely sure. Did you pull me out?”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

She stops to stare at him with a muted fearful outrage he doesn’t want to see.

That coupled with Veth’s next words bring his migraine to a nauseating peak. “Look, I’m not confident you should be on the sea at all if this is how you - “

“It wasn’t like that - I’m _tired_ \- ” and the excuse gets caught in his throat, Fjord knowing it’s just a roundabout way of telling the truth he doesn’t want discovered. He pauses before pushing through the explanation, “I haven’t been getting a lot of sleep. Not because of this, just generally, thinking about the war and our travels. It’ll be fine. I’ll be fine. Just need a bit of rest.”

“Not a bit of rest, a _lot_ of rest, if you’re so tired you’re - “

“- yes, I know - “

“- jumping into the ocean. I don’t think that’s conducive to a - a very healthy lifestyle in your situation - “

He wants to scream. “I didn’t jump, I just fell. I was exhausted and I fell. It happens.”

“It kind of shouldn’t! Not right now, at least.”

The implications behind her protest are left hanging in the air, but they’re undeniable.

Mustering up as much certainty as he can grasp onto, he firmly says, “It won’t.”

The expression she’s wearing is one rarely seen on her - he’s noticed it in his periphery whenever Caleb’s in trouble or when she’s interacting with her husband or son - an open and determined protectiveness that tells him, this is how she acts around those she considers family. It’s not the first time she’s shown that towards him, but it’s rare enough to always catch him by surprise.

It’s enough that he doesn’t know what to say when she asks, “You’re sure about that? Fjord, are you okay?”

Pain surges through him.

He stutters out, “I - I am.”

It’s clear she doesn’t believe him in the slightest.

“If you say so,” Veth nods. Despite her insistence on getting details, she can be shockingly perceptive about when she needs to back off, and he's absolutely amazed at how different she is from when they'd first met. That doesn’t stop her from leveling her gaze at him and saying bluntly, “You can talk to me, you know? Or anyone, any one of us. Probably someone else, but y'know, I just think we all understand at least a little of what you’re going through.”

There’s no argument he can come up with good enough against hers.

He knows he needs to confide in _someone_ about this and, though the conversation is painful to think about, he also knows it’ll be necessary. Inside of him is the underlying fear that even with help from his friends he won’t be able to overcome it. Bringing attention to it if it turns out to be an unfix-able phobia even away from the subject of perceived danger is far, far worse than anything he’s already dealing with.

It feels like nearly every moment he spends unconscious is a nightmare, like he’s only ever allowed to sleep when he’s being sent a message.

The message is that a primordial being of age-old horror wants him, _personally_ him, dead.

It’s a little more than he’s prepared to confront in so many words out loud.

“...Yes,” he still comes to that conclusion and softly yields to her insistence. “Yes, I think you’re right.”

Veth gives him a hard once-over in the next few quiet moments. The tension is mostly released, but Fjord gets the feeling this isn’t something he can just brush off until his naturally procrastinating head deems it too late to deal with. Veth is bound to tell the others, he knows, and he’s not even sure he’ll be able to blame her when it happens.

She stands up and Fjord notices regretfully that she’s also covered in water from having to pull him out. It must’ve been distressing, but he doesn’t get the chance to apologize before she turns back to the docks

“Market should still be open,” she says, jutting out a thumb in that direction.

Ready and hoping to put the entire experience behind him, Fjord grins and picks up the oars from the boat’s wet floor. He tries to ignore the scent of salt mixed with puke. “Good idea to stop by, then.”

* * *

It’s the middle of the night and, like many others, Fjord shoots fully awake from his half-asleep haze and he has to stop himself from howling in the dull pain that can only come from pure lethargy.

This was one rare night he mistakenly thought he might be able to sneak in an hour or so. His eyelids felt so heavy he thought for sure he’d eventually have to shut down and, in a way, he did - a short gap exists now in his memory of that night - but less like he’d rested any and more like his mind temporarily turned to static.

In the midst of it all he felt a voice creep past his ear.

_“Your body will be rendered unrecognizable before it has the chance to reach the ocean’s floor.”_

Hissing in a voice belonging to the dead body of the one who struck Fjord down and carved into him, it spoke the words slowly and viscerally inside his head. He could feel its breath on the back of his neck, though knowing it to be most likely a hallucination doesn’t alleviate the sickness building inside, the bile creeping up his throat as he now sits in the false calm of the dark room.

He throws the damp blanket off of him and starts patting at his sweat covered skin in vain.

Moon still shining brightly in the sky outside his window, Fjord breaks down in tears for the first time in...he’s not sure.

All he knows through his muffled hiccuping and hyperventilating is that it’s long, long overdue.

* * *

It’s an understatement to say his little issue is getting out of hand.

This fear is something he knows he can’t live with. It’s humiliating, a prison of his own making, and worse is he couldn’t bear the thought of anyone else knowing about it even though that’s exactly what he has to let happen. It’s what’s stopped him from getting a single good night’s rest, unable to break past the pride barring him from rectifying the situation.

It’s what gave something like a simple _yes_ the power to shake Fjord to his core.

He knows he can’t keep it up. Like this, he can’t protect anyone. That includes himself. Whether the ones he’ll be facing next will be hunting him down with a purpose or otherwise doesn’t matter if he can’t focus long enough to fight back.

Once Fjord decided on his own room that first night at the inn, Caduceus followed suit. It’s odd to not be sleeping in the same space for once.

It looks practically barren when Fjord finally tries looking for him.

It’s no surprise the bed is neatly made, probably untouched since he knows Caduceus wouldn’t use it. That doesn’t put him off as much as it might if he were looking for anyone else. What _does_ is the fact that the door is unlocked and just a select few of his belongings are packed in the only corner of the room that indicates anyone’s been here at all.

Fjord’s first impulse is to search around the building for a sign of green - a clearing of grass or an abundance of trees, anything that feels vaguely of Caduceus or what he might be drawn to - and it doesn’t take him long to find it.

A sharp hill’s incline almost masks the tips of the oak leaves he can just barely make out from outside the eastern windows. It's a forest fused with the mountain, leading sharply upwards past a stretch of foliage a decent few kilometres across.

Could he use the nature around him to find Caduceus? It’s probably not a great idea to demand it, necessarily, but he’s seen his cleric friend gently ask the discolored moss and singing crickets for directions before. Whether or not it’s ever garnered a helpful response isn’t something Fjord is certain about to this day, but he still thinks about it even if he also thinks directly interacting with nature right now would be like stepping into a minefield blindfolded.

Then again, that’s basically what he’s doing now. He can’t ever _stop_ interacting with nature.

Thankfully, Caduceus has quite the distinct smell and Fjord finds the air is much thinner here than it’d been near the coast.

He seems to have stopped at the first open clearing in the woods the widest path leads to and there Caduceus stands starkly pastel under the sunlight just before a small jagged oval-shaped pond. Where the sight might’ve been unnerving to him a time before, all Fjord can feel in this moment is awe at how picturesque the moment looks.

Just near the middle of the water is a single giant tree, standing out like a beacon in the sea of green with its slender white branches and tufts of pink flowers, the petals of which are scattered all across the water’s surface. Gradually they break off with each strong gust of wind like the florets of a dandelion, but their delicate nature is made up for by their sheer abundance.

Fjord’s steps are cautious and calculated, moving in time with the sound of the blowing breeze. He’s so sure he hasn’t been noticed he comes out from behind the last tree separating himself and his friend.

Right when he’s in earshot, Caduceus speaks up.

“I’ve seen these grow near the sea before, but I’m surprised it’s thriving all on its own out here,” he says casually, not even bothering to greet Fjord first. “Well, as its only kind, that is.”

Though it’s completely pointless to do so, Fjord still freezes up and then immediately wonders why his heart jumps into his throat.

It’s not like he’d been spying. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Finding Caduceus was his goal, after all.

After making a strained noise he’d rather not so blatantly classify as pathetic, he clears his throat and takes a forcefully confident stride next to his friend. He’s just close enough that the firbolg doesn’t have to turn his head to eye him delicately. “Tell me about it,” Fjord requests.

It isn’t what Caduceus seems to expect from the way his eyebrows raise.

“About the tree?”

“Yes.”

The pleased surprise reflected back at him gives Fjord some serious heartburn, whatever that might mean.

Caduceus gets a good careful look at it just to be sure before he says, “Name’s escaping me, but I didn’t get to see many of them back home,” and while he speaks, a short burst of wind sends the sound of rushing leaves across the clearing. “They don’t usually grow this big. It must’ve been planted here on purpose and cared for quite well. These ones like to travel in packs - not too normal to see one all on its own,” he simplifies.

Incriminating as it is to admit, listening to Caduceus speak like this is something Fjord doesn’t think he’ll ever grow tired of.

“Interesting,” he says with utter sincerity.

He’s rewarded with a kind smile. “Yes, isn’t it?”

Sporadic bursts of air pass through the both of them. Caduceus’ and Fjord’s clothes and hair flutter in unison as the former takes a few steps forward before crossing his legs to sit on the ground, just a foot or so away from the pool of water. 

Caduceus closes his eyes, expression tranquil. He seems fully immersed in their surroundings.

That’s when Fjord loses his composure, staring down at his friend while he meanwhile rubs his arm and looks around like he’s just not quite sure what to do with himself. And he isn’t. “I was - uh, I was hoping to talk to you about something,” he blurts out tactlessly and he sees those pink eyes shift to him. “Not - it isn’t extremely important, but I wanted to get your advice.”

It isn’t followed up with a single question, so there must be something conspicuous about the way he puts it. Patting the spot of grass just beside him, Caduceus smiles up at him and says, “Sit with me. It’s a nice day.”

It is, even if Fjord hasn’t let himself appreciate it. He does as requested and finally takes it upon himself to observe and enjoy the greenery, the wildlife darting by, the elements of nature touched by people long before him he’ll never get to know. Whoever put the tree here leaves behind a legacy they’ll never know the results of. It’s magnificently somber.

When he looks back up as if to get a second opinion, Caduceus is already staring right back at him. He’s expectant yet patient.

Fjord’s guts twist together.

He’s come this far.

As if washing the sins from his back, he begins to pour his past few weeks out into the open. 

A few times he stops to eye his friend’s reaction - Caduceus for all his enigmatic and mysterious essence is one of the most expressive people Fjord’s ever met and doesn’t often make an effort to change that - but he’s still met with silence, the kind that keeps pushing him to continue through his discomfort. Fjord is held underneath the gaze of Caduceus and never offered a way out, but it’s a necessary trapping he doesn’t struggle against.

Then, he goes into his experience with Veth. Alarm flashes in the firbolg’s eyes when Fjord describes his fall, but he even then doesn’t interrupt. It’s impossible to sound as nonchalant as Fjord would like about what happened.

He even, just from the rush of finally being able to get it all out, divulges the barest information about the night he’d cried. It’s horrible and it’s mortifying to admit it - sears in his chest and reddens his cheeks, the show of which only makes him feel worse - but it’s also a strange sort of cathartic. What helps is the straight face Caduceus manages to keep all throughout. Fjord’s not sure he could’ve handled himself if he’d seen even a flash of pity.

That’s about where his story ends, though he’s not sure with how he’d conveyed it the disconnected events and feelings could qualify as a story, and once he runs out of steam the pause between them stretches to a lengthy silence.

With great contemplation and a conflicted expression, Caduceus digests the verbal onslaught and Fjord gets a considerably sized pit in his stomach at the knowledge he’s responsible for it. “If it's been going on for this long, I wish you’d told me sooner. I could still help if you’d like,” Caduceus offers far too kindly. His ears perk up as he seems to remember something. “Did the Guardian of Faith help you sleep before?”

Fjord feels his shame grow, something he hadn’t even thought possible.

“It, uh, it did,” he replies, averting his eyes as he recalls with fondness and some level of embarrassment that night. “I’ll definitely request your tutelage if worse comes to worst, but I can’t rely on that my whole life.”

Caduceus thankfully agrees. “That is true. That is the nature of trauma. Ultimately I imagine this is something you’ll have to overcome on your own.”

That one word is like a slap in the face. Fjord blinks rapidly and shakes his head in bewilderment.

Putting a dismissive hand in the air, he a bit too eagerly corrects, “ _Trauma’s_ a bit pushing it. I’m just...”

Caduceus saves him the stress of trying to explain himself. “You died, Mister Ford. That was traumatic,” he states like it's not supposed to be the most disarming statement in the world. “Your former patron was a denizen of the deep sea and you were killed on its waters by its followers. Your nightmares - it’s drowned you multiple times before, from what we know. It’s perfectly understandable if the ocean is bringing any or all of that back.”

The simple, matter-of-fact way Caduceus recounts the events is so innocuous yet so terribly revealing. Having it all laid out at once brings Fjord face to face with the true gravity of his experience with faith.

Just maybe, he'd believed the sea and Uk'otoa by extension such integral parts of himself that all this time he's been in mourning.

In his mind, the realization is violently swatted away before he lamely replies, “Yes, making my experiences...resurface.”

“Indeed," Caduceus replies with a short chuckle.

Fjord just stares.

Wracking through his mind is the sound of his own bones, a snapping and crushing pain past the threshold he ever believed possible, his throat and lungs twisting and constricting around heavy sea water, the massive gaze invested primarily in his continued material value and only ever otherwise in his continued torture, a brand of hot agony from when he threw up the crystal - he silently pinches the bottom of his palm and his thoughts scramble.

Slowly, he admits, “I don’t want to be afraid of it,” before snapping his mouth shut. One glance up to his friend has him captured by the unmasked sympathy in soft pink eyes. Fjord frowns and grits his teeth, hissing out a sigh before saying under his breath, “Don’t look at me like that.”

“It’s not pity,” Caduceus tells him firmly, and that alone makes Fjord feel awfully see-through. “Rare you find someone out there who hasn’t experienced some form of trauma.”

Fjord isn’t sure what to say to that. It’s true, he knows, but it’s still not a term that sits right with him regarding his situation. He doesn’t want to look at it that way.

As if he can sense his friend’s internal suffering, Caduceus gives a bit of reprieve from the intense eye contact and averts his gaze for just a moment. He looks upon the body of water just a few short meters away. “All of you found me through your grief. That’s what people do - they come to me when they’re grieving,” he explains before turning back to Fjord and saying, “That’s what you’re doing now, too.”

That acts as the finishing blow, so to speak. Fjord finds himself too emotionally overstimulated to even think about contending with it.

Slowly, he begins. “It used to be comforting,” he says, and his voice is laced with a longing he feels deep in his chest, one he’s been so busy telling himself not to feel he hasn’t had the chance before now to realize how strong it is. “The ocean. Water. It still is. I’m not that afraid when I’m looking out from the deck of the ship. It just...hit me, on the small boat. I was like I could be pulled under at any moment.”

Caduceus nods. “I see. The proximity, then?”

“Proximity,” Fjord repeats, thinking hard on the idea without committing to it. “I do prefer being on the ocean rather than in it.”

That’s not always been the case, of course.

“This doesn’t happen with other, smaller bodies of water?”

“Not that I know of.”

Every anticlimactic answer makes Fjord feel more and more like he’s just running in place. He’s not afraid of water, necessarily. He likes water, just the same as he likes the sea. The part of him that’s been laid bare and poked and prodded says coming to see Caduceus was a terrible idea and that there must’ve been some logic to Fjord’s earlier evasions whenever he’d find himself in the same room as the man.

But he thinks, the notion creeping once again in his mind that he really just doesn’t understand himself, there’s a certain feeling present now that’s passed through him many times before. It encompassed him when he’d been adopted by - no, _nope_ , he’s going to rethink that word - _accepted_ by the Wildmother, then again and again in the moments he had to push through hardships to be cleared of the demonic history plaguing his soul.

He wants to trust his own senses more. Right now, his senses are telling him he’d like to take a nice warm bath. 

Caduceus’ question comes out nonchalantly, “Did you want to try?”

At first, Fjord doesn’t understand what he’s getting at. His friend’s eyes dart to the pond.

“What, just...sit in the lake for a bit?” he gestures to the water before them, more of a rhetorical joke than anything else. “See if I react?”

It doesn’t seem like a joke.

To his credit, Caduceus partially pulls back. “Worth a shot,” he says flippantly. With one good look at the half-orc, he narrows his eyes. It’s what Fjord can identify from his experience silently staring at Caduceus, however often he has to remind himself not to, the mien of a quick realization. “To be completely upfront, Mister Fjord, you look like you’re about to collapse any minute.”

Laughter erupts from Fjord. “That’s how I feel.”

This time, he doesn’t see Caduceus react, the cleric’s eyes cast downward into the shallow pool like he’s deeply debating on whether or not his suggestion holds any merit. “It’s an idea,” he decides on noncommittally. “If it doesn’t help, it doesn’t help. You could use this place while we have it to try and associate water with something more peaceful. Mister Fjord, have you tried talking to Her recently?”

Fjord’s breath hitches audibly.

The answer is a definite no. He doesn’t want to say that out loud, but he also doesn’t want to lie.

He responds with a simple, “I’ll try.”

That seems a sufficient answer. At least, Caduceus doesn’t look disappointed.

“Well. Good,” the tall, vibrant man eyes Fjord cautiously. “Would you like me to leave?”

Somehow, the thought of trying to connect with the Wildmother all on his own strikes in Fjord an anxiety stronger than ever before. It’s not as if he thinks it’d be a bad idea; it’s just that he’s feeling like a bit of a coward and wants his friend around in case any imagined worst case scenario comes to improbable fruition.

It’s hard to get the words out. “No, actually, I - “ he cuts himself off and then begins again. Without regard for his own emotional turmoil, he forces himself through it. “If you don’t mind, would you stay with me for a moment?“

Fjord’s intense desire for escape vanishes altogether when he sees the warmth in the way Caduceus looks at him, a sort felt too in his response.

“I wouldn’t mind at all.”

* * *

For a second, he thinks his vision’s been tinted sepia.

His first view after closing his eyes to meditate right in the heart of the water, just near the now luminous flowering tree, is the sky shining a peculiar golden. The rest of the forest aside from the one just near his head is gone, leaving himself out in the open, lying on his back.

Despite the noticeable shift in his surroundings it’s not immediately clear he’s dreaming. 

He wracks his brain for details of the last few minutes and comes up empty. He’d spoken to Caduceus, found it within himself to try meditating, and then...nothing. He thinks he must’ve fallen asleep, but that sensation is one he’s by now so detached from that he doesn’t even think he’s able to parse what it feels like anymore.

It takes an attempt to shift his foot just an inch for him to realize what’s covered his body head-to-toe - his unclothed body, he’ll add, though the water does well to mask the feeling of exposure he’d normally experience at the thought alongside the vaguely content haze his brain is in - it’s a lengthy seaweed sticking from the ground underneath the shallow water and wrapped gently around his limbs. Pink, he notes, and leaving a moss of the same color on spots of his skin.

When he does move it moves with him, not holding him in place but simply forming around him, embracing him. It circles his arms and legs and nestles between his fingers. Objectively it’s a bit of a horror. In the moment, it feels the nicest sensation in the world, the gentle vines moving around him as if with a mind of their own.

It’s a comfortable binding he’s felt before.

He can feel Her. It’s a sureness he can’t explain. There’s a calm that rushes over him every time She’s around, though he guesses She’s technically _always_ around.

The water around him doesn't seem to lead anywhere deeper, but it is no longer confined to a pond. It stretches out for as long as he can see no matter the direction he turns his head and there it is, the tree next to his head still there, its branches sticking out less from the new surroundings just above but giving him a strange sense of safety.

An unusually pleasant chill flows down his spine. It's a feeling like he's being watched, but by someone without malevolence or judgement.

When he opens his mouth, everything he’s rehearsed in his head when he’s imagined this moment leaves him. “I have struggled in faith. I’m sorry for...avoiding you,” he awkwardly apologizes. Quickly and under his breath, he says more to himself than Her, “I don’t know what I’m doing. Honestly, I don’t want answers. I just want...if time would see me able to call the ocean my home again, I’m not sure when that would be.”

With Uk’otoa, it’d been a matter of action and reward, of forced servitude. The relationship was mechanical and impersonal to a point where he’d never considered himself entirely religious despite his reliance on magic and power. It was never about worship and any time he’d ever felt spiritually abased before pales in comparison to now. The ocean under his God’s unbroken watch was a trap, but now with Her that doesn’t seem the right word.

It’s hard to say he feels _confined_ under Her gaze when She’s supposedly all around. Reverence unfamiliar to him rushes through his body. It’s humbling, but devoid of the normally accompanying malice.

“I haven’t been embracing you. Not as much as I know I’ve wanted to,” he confesses aloud, miraculously without being compressed by the weight of his panic. “I would like to make up for that, however possible. If possible.”

Crushing fear in his stomach is responded to with a rushing breeze against his partially exposed skin, like a hearty laugh.

Then, he hears it.

Dread repeatedly thudding throughout his body is countered with a warm comfort. “My waters may find you,” the matronly whisper encompasses the back of his mind as if the air and water and earth around him combine to one, “if they are mine you reach for.”

And like that, though Her presence is far from gone, he listens to the breeze soften and the waters still.

It feels once again like he's still expecting something awful, a _punishment_ \- but that'd be inconsistent with how he knows She's treated him in the face of his unintentional ignorance in the past. 

Once it finally sinks in that he's not in any danger, that he's _safe_ here, he feels…

Relief. Euphoria.

No matter how long it takes, he can see there’s hope; a hope he’ll be strong enough to free himself of the chains from his past. It seems so obvious now that the very thing he's been avoiding is exactly what he needs.

Fear has been ruling his senses, clouding his judgement, and while it's not entirely gone he finally has a single moment of lucidity and realizes he's been playing into the very limitations he's been trying to free himself from this whole time. The vines around his body constrict and then loosen, like a quick embrace before freeing him. They’re still all over, some beneath him, but they don’t wrap around his legs and wrists and neck the way they’d been before.

A different feeling comes to his attention - one he’s sure wasn’t there before, but it’s here now without warning.

He’s got something that feels distinctly not like a pillow or any part of the recoloured marsh surrounding him. Fingers twitch in his hair and he realizes his head’s lying in someone’s lap.

Above him sits Caduceus, back pressed against the grand tree trunk with a serene expression, head tilted just a tad downwards and half-lidded eyes meeting his own.

Fjord can't help thinking breathlessly, hopelessly, _he’s beautiful_.

* * *

It’s the same scene, sort of.

His surroundings are back to normal with the blue sky ever so slightly darker than before, tall oaks lining the grassy clearing, but he's in the same position with his back on some decidedly pretty sharp rocks and -

\- and Caduceus is still _here,_ and he looks very surprised.

Fjord can definitely tell that he’s awake and that his brief vision had been a dream and yet that knowledge is monumentally contradictory to the fact that he’s in that exact mirrored position now. Fjord can tell he’s wearing his clothes because they’re halfway soaking wet, but with the knowledge of what just happened he feels the slightest twinge of embarrassment at the fact that Caduceus might’ve in fact seen his dream.

That emotion is largely overshadowed because - well, they have already in short innocuous moments that eventually come with having a regular roommate seen each other naked before - and also because he’s too busy being floored at the idea that _holy shit_ , he might’ve just _shared a dream_ with Caduceus.

It doesn’t seem like it should be impossible in comparison to the other things he’s seen and done, but the idea never crossed his mind.

Fjord shoots upward from the shock of it all, the proximity, and the fact that he’s fully clothed and lying in a fucking lake.

Pushing past even his confusion is a clarity he hasn’t felt in weeks. It should rattle his sleep-deprived brain to switch positions so quickly, but he feels...fine. He can’t have been out for very long, noting the sun’s barely moved an inch since he last looked, but he feels strangely refreshed as if he’d had the longest and most serene slumber of his life. 

The pressure behind his eyes is gone along with the heaviness in his head and limbs.

Caduceus, barely reacting to the movement outside of slightly raised eyebrows, seems to be rather lost in thought himself. "That was - well, new," he says, voice a little uneven. "I was just over there and then..."

While his friend is having his own more understated crisis, Fjord finds himself seized in a completely new and alarming one.

It’s such a foreign thought for him to have. _Beautiful_ isn’t the type of adjective Fjord thought to use often before and never in reference to another man, regardless of any confusion he’d been decidedly _not_ working through about his sexuality. _Beautiful_ is new, and it was accurate.

Caduceus looked absolutely ethereal and he has before, on multiple separate occasions continues to, and Fjord has noticed. The gears in his head grind to a stop as he fails to digest that fact.

Instead of entertaining any of that shit, he asks a slightly less pressing question on his mind than any of the ones he’d actually like answered. "Did you happen to be here the whole time?"

To his minor relief, the firbolg shakes his head. "Just for a second. We were somewhere else. It felt like a dream, but a very short one."

"Then, you didn't hear me say anything?"

Brows furrowing in concern, Caduceus’ troubled look worsens to worry. "Should I have? Were you trying to talk to me?"

Fjord lets out a short sigh. Both calm and some level of disappointment wash over him at once. 

"No. No, just checking," he reassures his friend. It’d been something quite personal and the idea Caduceus might’ve bore witness to it was almost as frightening as it was exciting. "I was...I spoke with her a bit. It wasn't for long, but I think it helped."

The smile he gets in response marks the second best Fjord’s felt that day.

His soft pink hair flows in a breeze Fjord can’t feel himself. "Did it?"

It might be this sight that solidifies his sudden high spirits.

What he finds he feared most in retrospect was the chance nothing would happen. The possibility of being cast aside by Her sent through him an uncontrollable panic, one he used as an excuse to separate himself from finding it out at all.

These old feelings intertwine with his new ones, the ones he’s not fully sure he’s having. It doesn’t matter the way - he thinks he might burst open from the strength of his emotions. He feels like he might just go run a marathon, or like he’s just got to get them out one way or another. That’s why he finds himself saying, “I never...thanked you. Not completely."

That catches Caduceus by surprise. “What is it you're thanking me for?”

“No words can express how grateful I am,” Fjord chooses his words carefully as he chooses everything else he says. “For you, for your guidance - for helping me come to understand who I am. For bringing me back.”

This right here is what Fjord is better at when it comes to vulnerability. He doesn’t think he’ll ever be ashamed of how much he cares for his friends. He just thinks the awkward butterflies in his stomach when he verbally expresses his love for their newfound family are a symptom of that adoration. It’d be embarrassing for anyone.

“Well, we certainly weren’t going to leave you dead.”

Anyone including Caduceus, it seems.

Fjord clears his throat and finds himself beaming, hurriedly saying as if this is something he’d ever think to take advantage of, "I was told you did more than just save my life."

That brings an unexpected conflict to the other man’s eyes.

It’s unlike the grave cleric to be bashful or unwilling to admit to things he’s done out of affection or friendship, but Fjord’s queries are brushed aside at Caduceus’ explanation. "Death is natural," he begins, cautiously and familiarly trying to select the right thing to say. "It's also sometimes preventable. When it comes to you, I'll always try to make sure it is. All of you, obviously, but…"

 _You, specifically_. The unspoken words resonate between them.

Knots twist inside Fjord. They’re not wholly unpleasant.

He wants to scoff, like the universe thinks he doesn’t have enough on his plate already. But this is the type of problem he’s not so upset about having. This, at least, is manageable. Instead of getting out of the water he relaxes his back against the tree in a near mimic of the firbolg’s position, pushing their shoulders together and settling the back of his hand atop Caduceus’.

Part of Fjord can sense his friend move his head back and forth between himself and the direction of the water, making the connection that Caduceus has only just now realized they should probably dry off soon. “Just a few minutes, like this,” Fjord finds himself asking. “If you wouldn’t mind.”

Caduceus in that moment of pause fixes his eyes on his friend.

Once again, with a new curious fondness this time, he returns the smile. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”


End file.
